This appears to be the highest awards with a list of others at the bottom of the link: Bundesverdienstkreuz - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you had made yourself clear in your post you wouldn't have needed to have had your ear pulled, right? I thought that was what the umbrella term had meant and it would have been "translated" properly, my mistake. Ear pulling? I don't recall such a thing happening! I don't see what is so horribly anti-German about these statements? Elven, it's not like people fear the NSDAP could magically rise again. The way I see it is that the problem lies firstly in German mentality and secondly in its history, or rather what conclusions were drawn from it. Using the same iron cross would be kind of like continuing a traditional line, which started before WW2 of course, but it includes the time of the Third Reich, hence it's like white-washing the Wehrmacht, Waffen-SS and whoever else got iron crosses. You can call that overreacting - but Germans are very, very cautious about it. I think they fear the image of a proud, soldierly people and try to avoid any step towards this at all costs (that's also why they dreaded the decoration of soldiers in general for a very long time). Apart from that you should keep in mind that right-wing radicalism resp. the so called "new nazis" are a problem in Germany. I feel there may be a disconnect of sorts here, living in North America I might not see things in the same light as those living in Europe. I guess maybe I was looking into things too much. I guess I see your point, although not everyone receiving medals is the kindest person at hard, sure most might be but you will always have "bad apples". The same can apply here, not everyone receiving a Iron Cross (Wehrmacht at least) was a "demon". I was going to say, perhaps the German government should "clear the slate" when it comes to this kind of stuff. But if they did that, the usual critics would cry foul.
